Pennington County emergency officials press Black Hills Energy for local detail as utility plans preemptive power shutoffs

Pennington County emergency management officials told the Board of Commissioners on June 17 that Black Hills Energy’s plan to use preemptive, weather‑driven public safety power shutoffs could cause serious local consequences if outages last beyond a day.

Dustin Willett, the county’s director of emergency management, said the county has not yet received enough detail from the utility to map likely impacts and prepare response and support operations. "Long‑duration power loss is over 24 hours," Willett said, stressing that outages of that length raise acute concerns about people who rely on electrically powered medical devices, refrigerated medicine and food, electric well pumps, and telecommunication reliability.

The discussion followed a detailed briefing from Willett and a presentation by Black Hills Energy Vice President Steven Dunn. Dunn told commissioners the company considers public safety power shutoffs a last‑resort tool and has been developing localized criteria that combine weather station data, fuel‑load modeling and other risk metrics. "A public safety power shutoff is…